Parents willingly gave children to US Baptists

Source: AP

By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer Frank Bajak, Associated Press Writer – Wed Feb 3, 7:20 pm ET

CALLEBAS, Haiti – Desperate parents in this struggling village perched above Haiti's earthquake-flattened capital said they gave their children away willingly, trusting the American missionaries who promised to take them to a better life.

The stories the villagers told The Associated Press on Wednesday contradict claims by the Baptist group's leader that the children came from orphanages or were handed over by distant relatives. But they also attest to the misery of a nation that was the hemisphere's poorest even before the Jan. 12 earthquake struck.

The 10 Baptists, most from Idaho, were arrested last week trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic without the required documents, according to Haitian authorities, who have accused them of child trafficking.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100204/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_haiti_americans_detained

just as they lied to others about how they got the kids.

And see the parents doing the handing over.

I did notice while channel surfing that the meme that these adoptions are necessary and these adoptions are done willingly does seem to be cropping up.

jail..

they looked like trafficers..hell they no more looked like they were care givers!

Some were young and some old and they were mostly men ..

And just try giving your kids away here in the states..just try..without going through legal adoption..this was not legal..and those scum bags made me sick to my stomach!

Want to help those children? and call yourself a religion??..well then give money to their parents so they can stay with their own family!

This was trafficing..I have no doubts of that after seeing these pigs!

What a disgrace..and if they are not jailed in Haiti..then they damn well better be held by our own government and investigated and held accountable for trying to kidnap or traffic children!

None of their stories hold a damn pint of water..

Those pigs made me sick!

centers...money was the scam....they are lower than whale shit...

The other thing is, I know very well that little kids who are adopted out can be treated as though they are a blank slate. Without a previous history and all the psychological ramifications of being wrenched from their old environment.

But they are not a blank slate. For instance, even the poorest little kid in Haiti has some relative there, and some little playmates who they were attached to.

Any American parents who adopt such children should understand that they are suffering a loss that all the well stocked rooms of toys and big screen TV's cannot mend. The other thing is that Haitian children do not speak English but French - so it would be good if adopting parents have someone in the community who does speak French come to the house and talk to the child.

:evilfrown:

you'll find Christian Missionaries.

who think of blacks as less than the rest of us. WE would never give up our children. WE love our children more.

Even if this is true, there needs to be far more attention on the love and hopelessness of parents desperate to help their children and the failure of those of us with resources to help these parents never have to face this awful choice.

Or that the missionaries didn't intend to SELL the children.

Parents (in Haiti, for example) sell their children into slavery all the time, all over the world.

See:

Child slavery in Haiti

The practice of sending children to live with others is a long-held tradition in Haiti. The children are called restaveks — the Creole term for "stay with" — and are often promised food and education in exchange for domestic work.

It's a tradition the United Nations' special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Gulnara Shahinian, deemed deeply troubling in June 2009. Shahinian said the restavek tradition puts vulnerable children at risk of exploitation and sexual violence. She noted that families once negotiated placement of children, but the process is now steered by recruiters who stand to benefit financially.

Fears of child trafficking have spurred Haitian authorities to block international adoptions amid reports of children being snatched unlawfully from their parents. Haitian authorities are continuing to hold a group of Americans accused of attempting to take 33 children without proper paperwork across the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic. Members of the New Life Children's Refuge said they did not pay money for the children and had the children's best interests at heart.

But for some Haitians struggling in the aftermath of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, providing adequate care for their children is extremely trying. Silfra Joachin lives in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince with her three children. When asked if she would ever consider giving her children up, she replies yes.

More:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/03/f-haiti-restaveks-child-slavery.html

The kids were being offered a "holiday" week or two away from the devastation and deprivation.

By Monday, suddenly Fox News is saying that No, the operators of these organizations have good intentions.

It is hard to believe that the "adoption organizations" are all on the up and up. Especially when major news networks like NBC have already done in depth exposures of how such organizations operated in Fiji.

In Fiji, the poor families were told that their children were to spend a year in the USA being educated - but not being adopted out.

The notion that poor families don't bond to one another and don't care about one another, and that a well stocked nursery and modern classrooms will make up for the experience of basically being stolen from your family - that notion is rubbish.

Disgusting.

The Haitian "orphanage" business is like the orphanage business in many countries.

There seems to be this great shock about "the children had parents!"

Yes, as do most children in orphanages around the world whose parents gave them up.

You can go into any distressed country, set up an orphanage, promise the parents you'll take care of the children they can't afford to raise, and then take a piece of the action on adoptions. You can do it out of the purest, or the basest, of motives because, yes, it does make money.

eg. LGBT, liberal-thinking...

but can't help but notice the huge difference between the media's obvious 24/7 help, Congressional action and State Dept response to the individual from NJ who rightfully wanted his kid back from Brazil and to the inaction to these other Americans.

I tend to believe people first and I believe that these missionaries (even if they voted for Bush) were trying to help orphans and young people, until proven otherwise. Going to Haiti was definitely not a picnic trip that most Americans made. I didn't go but I donated to the Red Cross.

None of us know the reality or whether these Idaho people were really trying to help orphaned Haitians, or whether the NJ father was in reality as some claimed a wife beater and child abuser except for how the our corporate media portrayed them.

We allow media policy to help some Americans and pummel others and in reality we only know what the media manipulates us into believing. I say fuck the media. They have profits as incentives and use disinformation regularly to the benefit of their friends and to the harm of America.